> Today in IE10 pointerdown means the pen is in contact with the digitizer.
I just installed the latest Wacom Bamboo driver and I can confirm hover click still work on Windows 8 (the pointer goes down, I can move the pen while on air, the when I release the button, the pointer goes up).
I believe this is indeed a feature of the driver which emulates a click, Windows doesn't even know about what's hapening, I guess. The driver specify that 'hover click is the default parameter for external tablets' while 'hold & tap is the default parameter for Tablet PC' and I can switch between those two settings easily.
I believe it's out of the scope of this specification to define what kind of emulation drivers can do.